She Discovers that the Changes to Blogpost and Google Prevent Her from Constructing a Handy List of Links to Published Work

Yes, what it says. And since this was the reason I set up a blog int he first place, I'll start making a post for each new work I get published. This will not make finding my pieces easier, but it will do until I set up a proper website. Ah well.

In that spirit, I note that Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com) will take you to She Discovers that Her Republican Grandfather was a Secret Nazi Hunter, of which some was imagined but none was invented.

Mobius: The Journal of Social Change (mobiusmagazine.com) March 2021

Long Time Gone, but Well-Remembered

The first photo shows Walter breaking bread for breakfast in the flat we rented in Paris. Breakfast is baguette tradition, some chevre, Normandy butter, and a tangerine. Cafe au lait to come, in the nice little footed bowl. The second photo shows the locks of love mounted on the Pont des Arts, before everyone from all over the world started leaving locks, locks upon locks linked to locks, and the whole thing became too heavy and started peeling away from the bridge itself. Now the bridge is faced with thick pale green glass? or some kind of plastic? not unattractive, but nothing like the panoply of locks. Ours is the tiny black one at the upper left.

I have been working on a collection of my poems about Walter, sending it out to publishers. This week, The Beautiful Leaves was accepted by Bamboo Dart Press. They hope to have it printed by August 2023. The poems encompass Walter's aging and my grief about losing him. The poems themselves date from 2012 to 2022. I know that there is nothing new about loving someone who then dies, but I do believe that I have something unusual to say about that experience, namely, looking at the pain and the beauty directly of losing someone you have loved deeply and who loved you that way as well. I wrote these pieces partly to be honest about the horror and pity, but also to honor him as he deserved.

I had expected that getting the manuscript accepted would leave me joyous. This is not so. I have felt confused and weirdly relieved. I believe that, as glad as I always am when my work is appreciated by someone else, wrapping up this particular project means also wrapping up a chapter in my life. Ready or not, there it goes.

Not to Complain, but Complaining

Behold, an act of God. Last night we had hard winds, gusts up to 80 mph. For comparison, a Category 1 hurricane achieves speeds between 74 and 95 mph. I am not the only one in my community to have trees or parts of trees blowing over. This Italian cypress, unfortunately, came right up out of the ground and landed mostly in my neighbors' yard and on their roof. 

As it happens, these are the neighbors whose Tesla solar roof sends excruciatingly bright glare into my house ten months out of the year, running all along my west-facing wall. I've managed to mitigate said glare by installing ceramic film on all the windows and sliding glass doors. They had seemed amenable to paying some part of it, then apparently decided that I was harassing them and ordered me never to contact them again. Well, goodness. These are the folks whose kids hugged me when they saw me, and to whom I sent fresh-baked goodies. I had hoped we might remain civil but had to give up on that.

Well. Now, the tree lies on their roof, a pine of Rome. I suspect they are not home, as I have heard nothing from them, which suis me fine. Friends and my insurance company tell me that each person is responsible only for their own damage, a relief to me. I will incur $2000 for the deductible, thanks to the pipes that broke two years ago and flooded/destroyed half the house. 

Now I wait to be contacted by my insurance company's designated contractor. Apparently, there are 25 people ahead of me, so far. I had called an arborist I'd used in the past, but 1) he won't be available for two weeks, and 2) his truck now bears the message, "Democrats Are Destroying America." I'd rather not support him anymore.

This debacle follows bills of $2000 to the veterinarian for my cat, who attacked a possum and lost, of $4800 for corroded pipes, which repair included digging up half the front lawn, and, a bill for $8000 for bringing the electrical system up to code (and installing a new main switch, as the old one had frozen). 

I'm feeling beaten up by these acts of God. I had been in the middle of a major re-write qua reorganization of my manuscript of poems about my late husband, and I was making progress, though not without struggle. Looks like time to take a break for something hard in the outer world.